The Worst Hard Time

The Worst Hard Time

by

Timothy Egan

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Worst Hard Time makes teaching easy.
A migrant who became stranded with his family in No Man’s Land due to his horses starving during the trip south. They were migrating from Animas, Colorado to Littlefield, Texas—a town near Amarillo, Texas. The Whites arrived in Dalhart, Texas on February 26, 1926 and decided to settle there, becoming nesters. White first worked as a sharecropper. He believed that excessive plowing had caused the incessant dust storms that devastated the plains. In the 1930s, he was featured in the documentary, The Plow That Broke the Plains.

Bam White Quotes in The Worst Hard Time

The The Worst Hard Time quotes below are all either spoken by Bam White or refer to Bam White. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Westward Expansion and the Settlement of the Southern Plains Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

The land hardened. Rivers that had been full in spring trickled down to a string line of water and then disappeared. That September was the warmest yet in the still-young century. Bam White scanned the sky for a “sun dog,” his term for a halo that foretold of rain; he saw nothing through the heat of July, August, and September. He noticed how the horses were lethargic, trying to conserve energy. Usually, when the animals bucked or stirred, it meant a storm on the way. They had been passive for some time now, in a summer when the rains left and did not come back for nearly eight years.

Related Characters: Bam White
Related Symbols: Wheat
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Worst Hard Time PDF

Bam White Quotes in The Worst Hard Time

The The Worst Hard Time quotes below are all either spoken by Bam White or refer to Bam White. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Westward Expansion and the Settlement of the Southern Plains Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

The land hardened. Rivers that had been full in spring trickled down to a string line of water and then disappeared. That September was the warmest yet in the still-young century. Bam White scanned the sky for a “sun dog,” his term for a halo that foretold of rain; he saw nothing through the heat of July, August, and September. He noticed how the horses were lethargic, trying to conserve energy. Usually, when the animals bucked or stirred, it meant a storm on the way. They had been passive for some time now, in a summer when the rains left and did not come back for nearly eight years.

Related Characters: Bam White
Related Symbols: Wheat
Page Number: 102
Explanation and Analysis: